Workforce is the defining challenge facing behavioral health in 2025, according to Veronica Hughes, RN, vice president of behavioral health nursing strategy and quality at Advocate Health.
Advocate Health was created from the combination of Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health. Providing care under the names Advocate Health Care in Illinois; Atrium Health in the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama; and Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin, the organization has 69 hospitals. The system has the benefit of learning from other sites when tackling workforce challenges, Ms. Hughes told Becker’s.
Ms. Hughes will speak on “Behavioral Health Regulatory Focus: The Next 5 years” at Becker’s Behavioral Health Summit in June in Chicago. She sat down with Becker’s to discuss the growing need for behavioral healthcare and how behavioral health providers can evolve to keep up.
Editor’s note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are the trends that will define behavioral health in 2025?
Veronica Hughes: The ongoing challenges of workforce shortages, particularly for inpatient and adult clinicians and physicians, is something we continue to monitor. This is a challenge as a nation, having to ensure that we have behavioral health clinicians to meet the rising need of behavioral health and mental health patients. It is outpatient as well. We’re seeing more and more people who are comfortable [with mental health]. We’re seeing a reduction in stigma when it comes to being able to say, “Yes, I have a mental health need, and I want this to be addressed holistically, when I go to my primary care physician.” Rising to that need is one of the things we’re seeing an increase of — the nation as well as an organization.
Q: Are the workforce challenges you are facing evolving?
VH: We are working to combat workforce shortages with telehealth for behavioral health patients, and we have platforms to support behavioral health consultations outside traditional behavioral health spaces. This ensures that our patients who are being treated for their medical conditions can also have their mental health conditions treated via telehealth services. In our primary care group, behavioral health integration will assist our physician offices to meet the needs of their patients through telehealth master’s level care managers so patients can get behavioral health supportive care for as long as five months.
Q: Have you found any solutions that have helped ease workforce challenges?
VH: As far as our enterprise work, we’re looking at how all our different sites have accomplished meeting their workforce [needs], and are there opportunities to learn from one another? Our combination of Advocate Aurora and Atrium has given us the opportunity to see what has worked for others, and how we can incorporate that as a whole for all of us to be successful. Integrative work between the two areas of becoming a whole as Advocate Health is what is going to make us successful, and I think that’s been a big key piece.
Q: What are the other big trends you’re watching?
VH: As a leader in behavioral health as the third largest nonprofit health system in the country, we are working to holistically meet the needs of behavioral health patients within the hospital and in outpatient settings. Identifying opportunities to meet our patients’ needs and ensure ongoing stabilization with the use of technology is critical. AI is a big opportunity to ensure efficiencies. We continue to evaluate how AI can assist our clinicians and physicians and help ease their administrative burden in documentation. Doing so allows our workforce to spend more time connecting with our patients.
